Feminist Psychoanalytic Therapy

Feminist psychoanalytic therapy is a contemporary psychoanalytical approach to therapy that has influenced the way in which many psychotherapists think about and work with both female and [Page 411]male clients. While certainly not consistently feminist, Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) is arguably the first feminist psychoanalytic therapist in that he took seriously the symptoms and experiences of the young women he was treating. Unlike other medical professionals of his day who dismissed young women’s seemingly hysterical symptoms as irrational and untreatable, Freud studied the ways in which psychological symptoms manifest themselves in women, often in response to gender-specific experiences and limitations in their family and social lives. Therapists who take seriously and do not immediately pathologize the symptoms and dilemmas with which their female clients present— low ...